


No

by theheartoftheshadowcat



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alexander Hamilton Lives, Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:23:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17417216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheartoftheshadowcat/pseuds/theheartoftheshadowcat
Summary: Alexander had the good sense to say no to Maria Reynolds that night but trouble is still afoot for the Hamilton's as Alex's political foes will do anything to keep the federalists out of office.





	No

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexandraHamilfan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=AlexandraHamilfan).



**Alexander's POV**

 

The smell of moth-dust and chalk assaulted my nostrils as I sat wearily at my office desk, my eyes inflamed and itching as I let out a yawn so big it swallowed my entire face. I looked at the clock. Half-two in the morning as my eye caught sight of a framed photo of my dear Betsy and our children smiling down at me from the shelving unit, I had built the summer before.  Reaching up I took the picture down, stroking the face of the woman I love. Pregnant as she was with our third child. How I hoped it would be a boy! Another handsome young man like my Philip. Like my son said, he has a sister and all he needed was a little brother. I smiled, the poem Philip had written wedged underneath my coffee mug to keep it from floating out of the open window. I ran my fingers over the childish scrawl on the page. He was a smart one my son, and someday, he would run the world and it all started with me.

If I could change the world, if I could get it running, then it would launch his career and set up my family for life, as much as I hated this tedium, this endless drowning work, it was all for the greater good. All for the sake of my precious legacy. Sighing I put down the photograph, wiping a tear from my eye as I did so and wishing not for the first time that I had gone with my wife and family to the lake.  But I had work to do, my duty called. The president was counting on me to solve the problem of the country's national debt and if I didn't... I shuddered to think of the consequences. I had worked too long and too hard to get where I was, and nothing could jeopardize that. I had studied for this country, bled and killed for this country my best friend...poor John had died for the sake of a nation he never got to see and now it was up to me to finish what he started. 

I heard my wife in my head, 

**'Look around isn't this enough?**

**What would be enough?'**

I sighed, my head hurting as the clock told me just how late it was. God alone knew how long I had been at work today and I found myself beginning to daydream about what my family was doing right now. My darling Elizabeth, stroking the bump in her belly as she counted the stars. My son, ever studious and dutiful, reading by the fire while Angie caught dragonflies from her namesake's lap. I laughed at the mental picture, allowing my eyes to close briefly as I felt sleep massaging my shoulders causing them to slump for the umpteenth time that night while I rested my chin in my upturned palm and heard a slight snore come from my apparently open mouth. Dammit! I kept falling asleep in the middle of my work when there was so much to do before I slept that night so that I could untangle this knotted mess of a U.S. economy while those freaking Southerners whined about taxes and money and such. Mewling like some drowned cats about paying a tax on alcohol that they harvested through unpaid labor. 

I looked around at my opulent room, my wife's words ringing in my head for a second time, to most people I had the world at my feet. I was rich, well-dressed, a family man and yet no, for some reason...nothing was ever enough. I had to make it. Had to push the nation that I had lost so much for, to the top. This economic plan, this method, this was my shot and no matter what I could not throw it away. I would make it. I would prove to Eliza, to my son that no matter where you came from. No matter how poor you were, if you wanted something bad enough, you could have it. Jefferson would never allow himself to admit it, never, but I knew that he admired me in some oddly twisted way.

 I closed my eyes again, trying to remember Washington's words of encouragement, only to be interrupted Jefferson's boasting about how wonderful the south was. It made me sick to my stomach. Slave drivers who tortured people, treated them as less than human just because they had dark skin. Just what John had been trying to put an end to before some English grunt was misinformed and put an end to the life of the sweetest man I had ever known. Not that Jefferson cared, hell, he was all for independence if it suited his goals. Him and Adams, that...that...the word is too ungentlemanly to mention.  Still, all manners aside, the  _trio de republic,_ Madison, Adams and Jefferson were as merciless as the day is long and would have done anything to ruin my life and it all began with the systematic destruction of my political career.

"Fucking stubborn Democratic Republicans..." I groused, "We plant seeds in the ground we create...yeah while you sip iced-tea and watch your slaves, fucking hypocrites."

 It felt good to say aloud, even if no one could hear me. Relieved my stress just a little as I plugged on knowing how much was at stake. If I lost my cabinet post as secretary of the treasury then I would have to spend the next four years at least attempting to revive my struggling law-firm and then well it would all be over. I mean, I have been called and named a lot of things in my time, a crook, a bastard, a loud-mouth, a dreamer, to name a few but never a fool. And only a fool would think a Schuyler would stay married to a long-suffering lawyer who had been known to fly by the seat of his pants in everything he did. She was a lady and the only reason her father had let the likes of me anywhere near her was because we were at some point brothers-in-arms, but the war was over now, and I was as insignificant as a fly on the wall. I was worth little then and if I was not soon president, if I did not make myself useful then she would only be married to me on paper and that was just the most unbearable thing in the world to me despite what the public at large seemed to think.

They seemed to think, seemed in fact to be under the impression that I was little more than some over ambitious foot-solider who was after one of the elites like the rest of them. They were right. Or at least they had been at first. I like many of those in my regiment was after a Schuyler sister just to be rich, to elevate my status but then I had spent so much time with her that she had for lack of a better term - _infected me-_ with her emotions. Her love, her joy, hell just the way she sang my name when she wanted my attention made me smile from ear to ear. Yes, I had married her for selfish reasons but my love for her was as ever the one thing in my life of which I had no doubts. Yawning, I stretched my back and shoulders, pain twisting my insides as my kidneys protested my lack of adequate self-care and I felt like I ought to consent to it. To give into my body for sleep, food., hygiene, take a little break and make myself human again and not some urchin.

But I was nearly finished and promised my pained body that as soon as I signed my signature on the bottom of the page that I would wash up, eat something, and then sleep for a week solid till my wife and children came home. A breeze wafting through my window caused me to shiver as a violent sneeze escaped my nose and I got up to close the window. Only to slam my fingers in the windowpane and yowl in aggravation as the cold air woke me up. Right, ice, on my hand and then right back to work. Had to finish this work. Deadlines needed to be met, the only father I had ever known was needing me to do with this. He was so tired, tired of the fighting, tired of the bickering and just wanted some resolution to the problem of this nation's finances. And I owed the man that much. I was his right hand. I was his son...as much as I tried to deny it, this man was my dad and he had asked me for one thing in life.

To help him along the way as he struggled to lead a nation of ruffians who were as rag-tag as a bunch of orphans. Always fighting and vying for power when they had no need to because we were a union. Although this title seemed to be lost on most of them if I were honest. So, he was asking me to rain in the masses, set up a system to add and subtract and so on without causing some sort of civil war on top of the revolutionary one we had just finished. And I was going to do it for him. I would do anything for him. He was the father I had never had. The one male in my life that I had ever been able to look up to. So, if I made myself sick, if I missed one summer with my family then I would be all the better for it. Besides which, If I lost my job, where would my family be?

Eliza would have to go back to her father for money and eventually, god-forbid she would come to resent me for being what I am. She, my beloved wife, was the second Schuyler sister and I... I am nothing. A bastard whose name is as forgettable as the whore from whence he came. She would never, ever love me again if I lost everything due to wanting to see some water and cook a roast with my family. Betsy would understand in time I hoped but until then I had to -quite literally- soldier on, tired and achy as I was... _lonesome_ as I was feeling I needed to take care of my family. My pregnant wife, my Angie and Philip, they were all I'd ever had, and they deserved all the best the world had to offer and so help me I would give it to them. if it was the last thing I did on this earth, my children, my wife would inherit a legacy which would erase my shame. Come hell or high water I would be more than just some bastard with no name of repute, a credit to the name of Schuyler and to those who had died so I could live.

I was more than just a bastard, more than an immigrant and my enemies would see that...so help me and right now I had to focus to find some compromise for my debt plan. Some way for them and me to get along for the greater good. If that goon Jefferson could just see reason instead of thinking with his own arrogance that I could...I could...well I don't know what I would do now, I am so tired. I yawned again, intending to make another cup of coffee when I knock my well all over my desk.  Black sludge staining my papers and otherwise crisp white sleeve as it splashed all over me, making me choke as it trickled into my mouth and ran down my face. I blinked, I had fallen asleep on my desk and now had ink all over my cheek. I grabbed my handkerchief and made a futile attempt to mop it up, but it only smeared causing the pages to become entirely illegible.

"Fuck!" I yelled as loud as I could, feeling tears running down my face. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" 

I threw my papers off the desk, placing my face in my hands and groaning loudly. Six months’ worth of work outlining this whole debt-plan and now it was ruined! I was so close to being done, so close to getting to the lake where I could rest beside my wife. Hell, so close to just being able to sleep for the first time in a week and now I would have to start over. I threw down my pen and put my face in my hands as I cried. I was not stable and needed to rest for the night and as I got up to go to bed, I heard a knock at the door and ignored it the first time. I was too tired to deal with the person on the other side of the door tonight. I sighed as the knock resounded a second time and I put on my coat, my heart leaping with a slight albeit false hope that Eliza had come home early. But when I reached the door and looked through the windowpane at the top, I saw that it was not Eliza, no, not Eliza.

My heart sank.

My Betsy was blonde, a blonde angel of a woman with the softest green eyes I had ever seen. This woman, her hair was dark as her eyes and her skin covered in smatterings of freckles which were admittedly very fetching.  I did not want to open the door. Not because I was cruel but because I did not trust myself. I had been called the Tom Cat for a reason and she was a  **very** attractive woman and I was in a lonely and vulnerable place now. Lonely and drunk on exhaustion as I am, I had to temper my mind. Temper my desires for a soft voice, a gentle touch, someone to speak to who could hold my own in a debate and then laugh with me otherwise. I missed my wife, missed her terribly and I was lonesome, and longing for the friendship of my sister-by-marriage. To let her in would not lead to anything good I was certain, but dammit all if the sight of a woman in distress didn't tear out my heartstrings by the bloody roots

I realized then that the gentleman in me, the better nature inside my heart had to open the door. My heroic side not at all liking the sight of her slightly red nose. Being the father of a girl, I knew that meant she was in some sort of emotional discomfort. Either that or a case of the summertime sniffles. I rubbed my sleepy eyes as I slid the key in the lock, hoping that I was seeing things. Maybe she was less attractive then my tired brain allowed me to believe. One could only hope. I got my keys and went to unlock the door and found that it was in fact a woman, a very lovely woman with sad eyes and a red dress. How odd. I opened the door a little bit peering out behind it. Noticing that she had been weeping, her eyes red and puffy from it as she blotted them with a handkerchief. 

"Mr. Alexander Hamilton?" she asked softly, “attorney at law?" 

 

 

 

 


End file.
